“If someone said to me, ‘go and play on the moon with this ball’, I Would have gone. Football meant more to me than anything”

By Alice Wright

When women’s football in England was banned a courageous team known as the ‘Lost Lionesses’ flew to Mexico to take part in the 1971 Women’s World Cup. Former striker Chris Lockwood tells her story from playing on the same grass as Pele to being banned from playing football by the FA

Picture Josie Hall

Chris Lockwood can still remember the camera flashes that met her as the doors swung open in the early hours of the morning in Mexico in 1971. It was dark outside, and the flashes filled the sky. She turned to her teammates “I think there’s someone famous on this plane”. There wasn’t it was for them, and they were greeted as celebrities. 

The unofficial tournament was played 20 years before FIFA sanctioned the idea of the Women’s World Cup, with six teams competing at the Azteca Stadium. This was the same venue that hosted part of the men’s championship just 14 months earlier. 

Despite football fever sweeping through Mexico once again a year later with the huge fan and media attention it attracted – it was shortlived. The tournament had been erased in England, until now. 

Chris was one of 14 young women representing England and travelled over 5000 miles to take part. Only last year she began to share her side of the story publicly. 

There was little support for the women’s game in England during Chris’ childhood. Since 1921, the Football Association had banned women from playing on Football League pitches across the country. They could only play on local parks on a Sunday afternoon. 

“Girls have loved football all their lives, you know, for a long time, you know, you can go back to Dick Kerr ladies in the 20s is big and it never went away. It just got pushed away by the authorities,” Chris says. 

Chris’ love for football started very early in her childhood. She would play with her cousins and the boys at school in the playground at her Primary School in Luton. “All I cared for was football. If someone said to me, ‘Chris, come on, we’ll have a game on the moon’ I would have gone.”

“At school I wouldn’t get picked for the team because I’m a woman,” she says. “I was the best player, but it was really frowned upon at the time. When the boys were playing, I kicked the ball and I got sent back to the dressing room.”

Chris then joined Chiltern Valley run by Harry Batt and his wife June. While playing for them she was picked to play in the tournament. Harry was the man behind England’s 1971 team. Thanks to his forward-thinking mindset he travelled up and down the country scouting women to play on the international stage. 

“Harry travelled around the country as much as he could because he wasn’t a rich man. He was a bus driver and had a council house, there was nobody was funding him. So, he did it out of pure passion,” she says. “If we hadn’t gone then nobody would’ve. To deny women the chance of that well, it’s mad.”

Credits: Josie Hall

Credits: Will Douglas

The fans in Mexico were hit by football fever and the team’s training sessions were flooded with 300 people watching. This was far bigger than what they were used to back home. They were treated like celebrities and stalked by paparazzi. “We had police escorts because sometimes if you were going somewhere and the fans knew that they’d start circling the bus and it never got anywhere.” 

110,000 people watched the final as Denmark beat Mexico. It was and remains the best-attended women’s sports event in history. England lost all three matches in the tournament but played in front of 80,000 fans at the Azteca Stadium as they took on the host nation. 

The noise of the crowd reverberated through Chris’ body as she stepped onto the pitch. They had gone from playing in front of nobody to everybody. “You can’t hear other people near you, and you can’t hear yourself think,” she says. “It was high emotion; you were right in the middle of the crowd, so it was very intense.”

Despite being knocked out of the tournament in the group stages, Mexico had fallen in love with the ‘Lost Lionesses’. “The school children came with a little placard they’d made and on it, it said you have lost the game, but you’ve won the heart of Mexico.”

When the squad returned to England and stepped into Heathrow nobody was there and Mexico felt like a fever dream. They were slapped back into reality and for years none of them talked about it. Some didn’t even see each other again for another 47 years. “We never spoke about it and the only thing I think is because when we got back, we all got banned,” she says. “Psychologically we felt like we had done something wrong and nobody cared about what we had achieved. Some of the girls never played again.” 

Their manager Harry got banned by the FA for life. “That was the worst of it all. Ban the man that wanted the best for women’s football.”

Chris was surprised the competition did not have a greater impact in England and around the World. “If I had wanted to shout and rave about it, there just wasn’t the platform to do it,” she says. “We remember coming home thinking this is it now, for all the women footballers it’s going to be great. The reality is it’s only been great in these last six years.”

It wasn’t until 1991 that the first FIFA Women’s World Cup was held and the Women’s Football Association, founded in 1969, then launched the National League. It wasn’t until six years later that the FA outlined plans to develop the women’s game all the way through from grassroots to elite level.

The story of the secret tournament has now been turned into a documentary produced by Serena and Venus Williams called ‘Copa 71’. “Not only did we all reunite again, but someone decided to make a film. Even if you don’t like football, they would love it.” 

For Chris the silver lining of her story is the people she’s now met because of the success of their story and the uplifting of women’s football. “I’ve met nothing but lovely people. The fact that people are writing about our story that’s brilliant for a start, talking to school children, seeing my niece write a play.”

A girl that Chris met when she was speaking at a university decided to quit her job at Manchester City to work on the documentary as a researcher and now it’s over, she’s started a foundation called ‘Our Goal’. 

“All these things have come from me that have inspired people. What more can I ask otherwise it’s not worth it, is it?”

Credits: Will Douglas